This seems like it would be great cover if you're trying to hide the fact that people a lot of people really dislike what you're doing and are complaining so much your system couldn't take the load. "Oh, it wasn't because lots of people were complaining.... it was a DDOS".
I'd rather suspect incompetence. This form is getting some serious publicity, several workers of magnitude outside the normal traffic patterns I would imagine.
Bloomberg radio just reported on this. No mention of an attack. Though they did quote an FCC spiteful response that receiving so much traffic just means they can't look at the comments.
I'm still hoping that they eventually bring in an analyst to value the new proposed FCC rules to last mile providers, and what it will do to their stock.
Oh yeah, like these comments really matter this time around.
A certain sector of society elects Donald Trump, who appoints the new FCC chair, and they'll do whatever they want within legal possibilities. Do you really think the sector of society which most cares about this rule change will affect the outcome with comments? They will no more do so than scientists will affect the budget of the EPA with comments.
The comments will affect the record which will potentially be relevant in subsequent proceedings, including lawsuits. It probably won't materially affect the initial policy outcome, sure.
Trump is as much a politician as anyone. He's so worried about his rep, he's actually trying to build the wall.
If people are against this en masse -- he won't touch it. My guess is he backs down or takes a neutral stance, just like Wheeler did on net neutrality, and like Obama did on encryption.
I mean, you know behind the scenes they're trying like hell to get rid of net neutrality, but they can't do that in the face of a public outcry.
This is one issue that is not red/blue. The hackery of Trump's campaign operated through the open internet, and I think the tech crowd on both sides of the aisle realize that removing net neutrality would just enrich the ISPs and would do nothing to improve our internet speeds or access to diverse content.
> If people are against this en masse -- he won't touch it. My guess is he backs down or takes a neutral stance, just like Wheeler did on net neutrality, and like Obama did on encryption.
Wheeler did not take a neutral stance. He was always for net neutrality. Some people were confused on that point because after the courts tossed out the Open Internet Order of 2010, Wheeler's first proposed replacement was weaker. In particular, it would have allowed paid "fast lanes".
It was weaker not because he preferred weaker net neutrality, but rather because he wanted to try to save net neutrality using the same legal authority that the 2010 order used, if he could. That would be very likely to survive further judicial scrutiny, and also not to draw to much Congressional ire.
But from the start he said he was open to reclassifying ISPs as Title II common carriers in order to make a new order that was stronger than the 2010. The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of that, and that's what he went with.
People also get confused about Wheeler's intentions because he was once head of the main cable trade association, and later head of the main cellular/wireless trade association. What is often overlooked is that at those times, those industries were young, small, and trying to compete against big established players (broadcast networks in the case of cable, the big telephone companies in the case of cellular/wireless). Fighting for cable and wireless was the pro-consumer, pro-competition side at the time.
In Wheeler's own words:
Wheeler> You have to think about what I was lobbying for. The cable industry at that point in time was fighting being put out of business by this agency at the request of the broadcasters. Broadcasters wanted to shut down the cable companies. They didn't want to give them access to programming because they didn’t want the content in the market, the competition in the market. And so I joined a crusade—we called it ‘plant a flower in the vast wasteland’—to have choice for Americans in what they see on television.
See this interview if you want to understand Wheeler:
I didn't mean to say he did. The president is the only one who can wait and see what the public thinks before speaking. Everyone else has to act in order to test the waters for the President.
> Wheeler's first proposed replacement was weaker. In particular, it would have allowed paid "fast lanes".
Yeah, that's not net neutrality at all. Title II classification was good and overall Wheeler kept the internet open. But, fast lanes don't have any place in a neutral internet.
The man's got a 40% approval rating in his first few months, and Republicans are attempting to push a healthcare bill through congress that currently has an 18% approval rating and a 56% opposed rating.
Opening up ANOTHER front for republicans, prior to the midterms should, actually, be quite upsetting. These are not the sorts of numbers the majority party wants to have before a midterm election.
I'm not a Trump supporter by a long shot - I think he's the purest embodiment of American fascism to date, save for FDR.
(I did have a few hopes for his Presidency when he was campaigning; most of those have evaporated as he's turning out to be every bit the warmonger people feared, instead of a non-interventionist).
But: "a certain sector" indeed! You mean "the American people", I think. What would you think if someone described Obama's election in the same fashion?
I may agree with you regarding FDR and Trump, but their styles and attention to detail are vastly different.
I meant the words "a certain sector". Many of the people who voted for Trump did not want to gut net neutrality. I was pointing out that when a sector of society votes for X, their elected official can also do Y and Z. This is the representative democracy system, which I think has major flaws.
Real confirmation of an attack would be a nice-to-have in this situation. I can see 3 probable realities:
1. The sheer volume of commenters and responses took down the system. They cover it by saying a DDoS attack was the cause.
2. They are intent on crippling Net Neutrality anyway, and either designed the system to insufficiently handle traffic and call it a DDos or even DDos themselves.
3. Since there are groups with vested interest in removing net neutrality, and they have deep pockets, I can easily see a few groups moving to protect their interests. In other words, a legitimate DDoS attack.
All 3 seem equally likely to me, especially considering Ajit Pai's stance on NN. This is not encouraging as a citizen of the US.
In 2016, Australia held its first online-first national census. Unsurprisingly it was a complete disaster, and the government told us the system was the victim of a DDoS attack right around dinner time for the east coast. They also told us they expected around 10 million participants and that during capacity planning they took the expected 1 million submissions per hour and doubled it to be safe, i.e. that a bunch of statisticians thought that 10 million people would form a uniform distribution over a day rather than spiking when they get home from work.
Yeah. The ineptitude there was staggering. I was actually going to refuse to fill out the census on principle, but my wife's sense of civic duty prevailed ;)
Fortunately so did her risk analysis skills. She noticed those numbers being bandied about by the Government prior, and decided she'd log on the very moment the census opened, because it was likely to fail under load.
John Oliver's video is #3 trending on YouTube right now. It specifically calls for people to write comments on that page. He even bought up a domain that points directly to the page. http://gofccyourself.com
Citing the second paragraph of the posted article:
> “These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”
> “Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to
multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments. We have worked with our commercial partners to address this situation and will continue to monitor developments going forward.” [1]
Given that the FCC thinks "bulk commenting" via a spreadsheet is a proper solution to their website difficulties, I don't really believe in their ability to diagnose an issue as a DDoS. More likely, lots of people were trying to comment but couldn't.
Yeah, today after I watched the video, I went to the domain, clicked the button to express, saw the form fields, and decided I'd come back to it after work.
I'm probably not the only one who dropped-off after seeing all the form fields.
> "While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments."
That still seems to fit the description of John Oliver..
Hes an external actor (to the FCC system).. he wasn't attempting to comment himself, but his actions sent a large number of people to the FCC website.. too much for the host to handle, which made it difficult for commenters to access the site.
To those trying http://gofccyourself.com, your TL;DR instructions are to click "Express," fill in your comment (you're the "filer"), review and submit.
Yes, perhaps the wording was odd. There is an actual... er, sequence of events that did happen. In other words, a reality. There is reality and speculation, but seeing as I can't know for certain, I can only speculate. The options I listed appeared to me to be the most probable.
After watching John Oliver's show on HBO Now, I tried to leave a comment and the site was down. This was at midnight, around the time all HBO Now subscribers would've been getting to the "Here's how to leave a comment" part of the program. No doubt live viewers had posted about gofccyourself.com on social media after doing it themselves, adding to the traffic.
This was no attack, this was legitimate public outrage.
It's also the corps with money: Pay for preferred treatment and raise the barrier to entry for any competitor. Given how Microsoft reacted when they saw their greatest enemy as "some kid in their garage brewing the next killer app", that's a very real concern.
Basically, any business that uses the internet as a primary tool could spend to boost their priority with ISPs. That benefits basically any big company while screwing us because we can't choose a different ISP.
I know for consumer complaints the FCC runs everything through Zendesk, so in theory there is a 3rd party who could verify any claims like this. I wonder if the there's a vendor doing hosting for the comments system as well.
NET NEUTRALITY IS IMPORTANT TO OUR COMMUNICATIONS IN A FREE SOCIETY. IT MUST BE ENFORCEABLE. TO TRUST CORPORATIONS TO IGNORE OPPORTUNITIES TO INFLUENCE THE USE OF THEIR OWN PRODUCTS OVER OTHERS IS BEYOND FOOLISH, IT SUGGESTS ULTERIOR MOTIVE. TRUMP WAS ELECTED BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED A CHANGE, LETS SEE THAT THE CHANGE IS TOWARD THE FREEDOMS THIS COUNTRY STANDS FOR NOT AWAY FROM THEM.
NET NEUTRALITY IS IMPORTANT TO THE FREE COMMUNICATION THAT UNDERPINS OUR FREE SOCIETY. IT MUST BE ENFORCEABLE. TO TRUST CORPORATIONS TO IGNORE OPPORTUNITIES TO EXERT IMPROPER INFLUENCE FOR THEIR PRODUCTS IS BEYOND FOOLISH, IT IS EITHER VERY STUPID OR DISHONEST. TRUMP WAS ELECTED BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED A CHANGE. LETS SEE THAT THE CHANGE IS TOWARD THE FREEDOMS FOR WHICH THIS COUNTRY STANDS, NOT AWAY FROM THEM.
Once again: We screwed up by not making this a campaign issue.
Many of the news stations here are affiliated with internet providers. The candidates both took money from the industry. No one was going to make this an issue, and we screwed up by not forcing it to be part of the conversation.
Of course we also let the election happen without a major conversation about fracking.
I think this needs to be solved at the state-representative level anyways with legislation. This currently fickle flipping between administrations is bad for consumers and creates uncertainty in buisiness, which means they don't want to make long term investments. Why bother upgrading your wires for a long term profit if you are going to be regulated into the dust or if you are going to be more free to exploit monopoly power on your pricing? Just play wait-and-see forever.
Maybe this should never have been something implemented by mere regulation in the first place? The Commission generally disregards bulk comments that repeat the same boilerplate language, has done so for decades, and is looking for logical argument grounded in the law rather than emotional outbursts.
How about getting a bill passed in Congress providing for this? There were opportunities. There can be again in the future. Laws are harder to repeal compared to regulations.
Besides, I was there when the original ECFS was created. Events like this make me miss the days when paper filings were the norm. You had to think harder about what you were going to say compared to today's emails of rage provoked by a comedian. You had to reflect carefully way back when...prior to mid-1997, that is.
Instructions say select your state from the dropdown. State is tagged required. State dropdown is empty and wont let me proceed :) Tried again an hour later and it worked.
Still doesn't work. They can't even keep their site up, yet they want to dictate policy for the whole Internet. Am I the only one who finds that absurd and beyond fucked up?
EDIT: Site works, form submission doesn't. Doesn't sound like a DDoS to me.
80 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadThis seems like it would be great cover if you're trying to hide the fact that people a lot of people really dislike what you're doing and are complaining so much your system couldn't take the load. "Oh, it wasn't because lots of people were complaining.... it was a DDOS".
I'm still hoping that they eventually bring in an analyst to value the new proposed FCC rules to last mile providers, and what it will do to their stock.
Fuck it, too many taxes, I'll just buy a senator.
(joke about they should have purchased fastlaneTM brand internet)
A certain sector of society elects Donald Trump, who appoints the new FCC chair, and they'll do whatever they want within legal possibilities. Do you really think the sector of society which most cares about this rule change will affect the outcome with comments? They will no more do so than scientists will affect the budget of the EPA with comments.
If people are against this en masse -- he won't touch it. My guess is he backs down or takes a neutral stance, just like Wheeler did on net neutrality, and like Obama did on encryption.
I mean, you know behind the scenes they're trying like hell to get rid of net neutrality, but they can't do that in the face of a public outcry.
This is one issue that is not red/blue. The hackery of Trump's campaign operated through the open internet, and I think the tech crowd on both sides of the aisle realize that removing net neutrality would just enrich the ISPs and would do nothing to improve our internet speeds or access to diverse content.
Wheeler did not take a neutral stance. He was always for net neutrality. Some people were confused on that point because after the courts tossed out the Open Internet Order of 2010, Wheeler's first proposed replacement was weaker. In particular, it would have allowed paid "fast lanes".
It was weaker not because he preferred weaker net neutrality, but rather because he wanted to try to save net neutrality using the same legal authority that the 2010 order used, if he could. That would be very likely to survive further judicial scrutiny, and also not to draw to much Congressional ire.
But from the start he said he was open to reclassifying ISPs as Title II common carriers in order to make a new order that was stronger than the 2010. The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of that, and that's what he went with.
People also get confused about Wheeler's intentions because he was once head of the main cable trade association, and later head of the main cellular/wireless trade association. What is often overlooked is that at those times, those industries were young, small, and trying to compete against big established players (broadcast networks in the case of cable, the big telephone companies in the case of cellular/wireless). Fighting for cable and wireless was the pro-consumer, pro-competition side at the time.
In Wheeler's own words:
Wheeler> You have to think about what I was lobbying for. The cable industry at that point in time was fighting being put out of business by this agency at the request of the broadcasters. Broadcasters wanted to shut down the cable companies. They didn't want to give them access to programming because they didn’t want the content in the market, the competition in the market. And so I joined a crusade—we called it ‘plant a flower in the vast wasteland’—to have choice for Americans in what they see on television.
See this interview if you want to understand Wheeler:
https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/how-a-former-lobbyi...
I didn't mean to say he did. The president is the only one who can wait and see what the public thinks before speaking. Everyone else has to act in order to test the waters for the President.
> Wheeler's first proposed replacement was weaker. In particular, it would have allowed paid "fast lanes".
Yeah, that's not net neutrality at all. Title II classification was good and overall Wheeler kept the internet open. But, fast lanes don't have any place in a neutral internet.
Opening up ANOTHER front for republicans, prior to the midterms should, actually, be quite upsetting. These are not the sorts of numbers the majority party wants to have before a midterm election.
(I did have a few hopes for his Presidency when he was campaigning; most of those have evaporated as he's turning out to be every bit the warmonger people feared, instead of a non-interventionist).
But: "a certain sector" indeed! You mean "the American people", I think. What would you think if someone described Obama's election in the same fashion?
I meant the words "a certain sector". Many of the people who voted for Trump did not want to gut net neutrality. I was pointing out that when a sector of society votes for X, their elected official can also do Y and Z. This is the representative democracy system, which I think has major flaws.
Yes. Basically, FDR was competent. Trump isn't. I'm still not sure which is worse, given it's competence at achieving goals with which I disagree.
> This is the representative democracy system, which I think has major flaws.
Also agreed. What do you think of sortition as a replacement?
1. The sheer volume of commenters and responses took down the system. They cover it by saying a DDoS attack was the cause. 2. They are intent on crippling Net Neutrality anyway, and either designed the system to insufficiently handle traffic and call it a DDos or even DDos themselves. 3. Since there are groups with vested interest in removing net neutrality, and they have deep pockets, I can easily see a few groups moving to protect their interests. In other words, a legitimate DDoS attack.
All 3 seem equally likely to me, especially considering Ajit Pai's stance on NN. This is not encouraging as a citizen of the US.
Fortunately so did her risk analysis skills. She noticed those numbers being bandied about by the Government prior, and decided she'd log on the very moment the census opened, because it was likely to fail under load.
> “These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”
> “Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos). These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host. These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC. While the comment system remained up and running the entire time, these DDoS events tied up the servers and prevented them from responding to people attempting to submit comments. We have worked with our commercial partners to address this situation and will continue to monitor developments going forward.” [1]
Given that the FCC thinks "bulk commenting" via a spreadsheet is a proper solution to their website difficulties, I don't really believe in their ability to diagnose an issue as a DDoS. More likely, lots of people were trying to comment but couldn't.
[1] http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017...
- User tries to load the page to comment.
- High traffic. It fails.
- User reloads the page. It fails.
- "We're being hit by malicious requests that don't attempt to file comments!"
I'm probably not the only one who dropped-off after seeing all the form fields.
...That doesn't sound like "up and running."
That would be a very incorrect usage of the term.
Hes an external actor (to the FCC system).. he wasn't attempting to comment himself, but his actions sent a large number of people to the FCC website.. too much for the host to handle, which made it difficult for commenters to access the site.
This was no attack, this was legitimate public outrage.
Basically, any business that uses the internet as a primary tool could spend to boost their priority with ISPs. That benefits basically any big company while screwing us because we can't choose a different ISP.
http://www.gofccyourself.com
press the link "+ Express"
I mean i have not posted anything as i am not a US citizen but the form loads and i can fill it in
http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/160454924113/fccs-c...
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/2017050...
Many of the news stations here are affiliated with internet providers. The candidates both took money from the industry. No one was going to make this an issue, and we screwed up by not forcing it to be part of the conversation.
Of course we also let the election happen without a major conversation about fracking.
I think this needs to be solved at the state-representative level anyways with legislation. This currently fickle flipping between administrations is bad for consumers and creates uncertainty in buisiness, which means they don't want to make long term investments. Why bother upgrading your wires for a long term profit if you are going to be regulated into the dust or if you are going to be more free to exploit monopoly power on your pricing? Just play wait-and-see forever.
How about getting a bill passed in Congress providing for this? There were opportunities. There can be again in the future. Laws are harder to repeal compared to regulations.
Besides, I was there when the original ECFS was created. Events like this make me miss the days when paper filings were the norm. You had to think harder about what you were going to say compared to today's emails of rage provoked by a comedian. You had to reflect carefully way back when...prior to mid-1997, that is.
https://advocacy.mozilla.org/en-US/net-neutrality
EDIT: Site works, form submission doesn't. Doesn't sound like a DDoS to me.